imanautie
TS Member
I'm not saying I think it makes sense, but it wouldn't surprise me, they could also take the Drayton manor model of some attractions being mandatory virtual queue with most not.
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Virtual Queuing in 2021
I'm not saying I think it makes sense, but it wouldn't surprise me, they could also take the Drayton manor model of some attractions being mandatory virtual queue with most not.
tayspru
TS Member
Maybe they’ve finally got a long term plan to add in some more filler flats , but I doubt that
Ian
TS Team
Ultimately where any virtual queue system will fall down is the balance of virtual capacity versus actual throughput and queue time.
(All of the following numbers are hypothetical, but I’m just trying to illustrate a point.)
On paper Nemesis can chew through 1400pph. Let’s say you were to offer 15 minute virtual timeslots, that’s around 350 riders the coaster can carry in total every 15 minutes. You may then say, for arguments sake that you want 50% of the ride’s capacity allocated to virtual lines. That’s 175 virtual seats every 15 minutes.
However, if a train suddenly develops a defect and is withdrawn from service, you’ve suddenly massively reduced those figures, but may already have people booked to ride. Or maybe you may have a less experienced ride team operating who aren’t as efficient and struggle to run the ride at over 1000pph. This is where you suddenly start seeing oversubscribed rides and have people backing up. It’s exactly the same issue we see today with queue time estimations. It’s all well and good to say “to this particular point is 30 minutes”, but there’s so many variables that can alter that. All of this will affect the accuracy of your virtual queue lengths.
Europa Park have some rather neat technology already in place to try and manage queue lengths and throughputs, whereby guests are counted as they enter the queue and empty seats on the rides are also counted, along with dispatch intervals. This helps them calculate a reasonably accurate throughput and (in theory!) queue time. When you put all of this data together you get a pretty good idea of how long guests will be waiting. I’d be intrigued to know how closely they’ve integrated all of these data sources into their system to determine how many and how often virtual slots are available, as I do wonder if this is part of the reason it seemed to work so well. Everything needs to be dynamic and reactive.
(All of the following numbers are hypothetical, but I’m just trying to illustrate a point.)
On paper Nemesis can chew through 1400pph. Let’s say you were to offer 15 minute virtual timeslots, that’s around 350 riders the coaster can carry in total every 15 minutes. You may then say, for arguments sake that you want 50% of the ride’s capacity allocated to virtual lines. That’s 175 virtual seats every 15 minutes.
However, if a train suddenly develops a defect and is withdrawn from service, you’ve suddenly massively reduced those figures, but may already have people booked to ride. Or maybe you may have a less experienced ride team operating who aren’t as efficient and struggle to run the ride at over 1000pph. This is where you suddenly start seeing oversubscribed rides and have people backing up. It’s exactly the same issue we see today with queue time estimations. It’s all well and good to say “to this particular point is 30 minutes”, but there’s so many variables that can alter that. All of this will affect the accuracy of your virtual queue lengths.
Europa Park have some rather neat technology already in place to try and manage queue lengths and throughputs, whereby guests are counted as they enter the queue and empty seats on the rides are also counted, along with dispatch intervals. This helps them calculate a reasonably accurate throughput and (in theory!) queue time. When you put all of this data together you get a pretty good idea of how long guests will be waiting. I’d be intrigued to know how closely they’ve integrated all of these data sources into their system to determine how many and how often virtual slots are available, as I do wonder if this is part of the reason it seemed to work so well. Everything needs to be dynamic and reactive.
Burbs
TS Team
Indeed. I know I've mentioned Walibi quite a lot over the last few months, but it is a good example of a bad example...! The 8 rides on FastLane maxed out at 2 hours in the virtual queue (not taking into account the physical queue you then had to wait in, sometimes half an hour or more, but that's by the by) so the queues didn't get too astronomically long. But at one point Untamed either went down or took a train out of service (I'm unsure which) and as it's naturally their most popular ride, they made the decision to open up the virtual queue for longer than what it should be, meaning at one point it was at 3.5 hours. Really not ideal. Especially since when we visited in 2019, the year the ride opened, and on a similar crowd level to 2020, we didn't wait longer than 80 minutes even on one train.
VerticalLoop123
TS Member
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Alton Towers used to have some form of virtual queue system in the late 90's/ early noughties? I think I remember reading about it somewhere.
In terms of virtual queuing in other parks I always thought the Disneyland Paris system works quite well. Every time I've been you usually see quite al ot of British tourists crowing round the machines amazed at this concept of a free Fastrack *sort of*, especially with us Brits used to parks like Alton Towers up charging for skipping the queue. I think when virtual queuing is optional and seems a benefit to the average person who's bought a theme park ticket for the day it works. I don't know if this is just because I am an enthusiast, but I always feel as though there is a negative perception of fastrack- that those people don't have to queue because they've paid more than us, creating a them and us attitude. I always vividly remember when the Smiler reopened after the crash- a lot of us had queued from the early on to get in the first few trains and there was a collective boo when the fastrack queue got released before the main queue to go up the stairs. If you give everyone like a fastrack through virtual queueing it puts everyone on a more even keel. However, I can't really see Towers scrapping paid fastrack anytime soon- particularly with the current financial situation.
If they do implement it this season I can imagine they'll use the app-I found this on the app developers website https://attractions.io/covid-19 - and it will be for social distancing purposes. Even though I think by the end of the season they had worked the social distancing out more- there were still issues- for example the Smiler queue seemed to be a big issue- getting everyone in the pit to obey social distancing sounded like a right headache for the ride ops- many of which had to shout over the tannoy every ten mins to remind people to stand apart. Open and closing the queue as well seemed like a faff- whereas I guess with a Virtual queue in theory you would have less people in the pit.
In terms of virtual queuing in other parks I always thought the Disneyland Paris system works quite well. Every time I've been you usually see quite al ot of British tourists crowing round the machines amazed at this concept of a free Fastrack *sort of*, especially with us Brits used to parks like Alton Towers up charging for skipping the queue. I think when virtual queuing is optional and seems a benefit to the average person who's bought a theme park ticket for the day it works. I don't know if this is just because I am an enthusiast, but I always feel as though there is a negative perception of fastrack- that those people don't have to queue because they've paid more than us, creating a them and us attitude. I always vividly remember when the Smiler reopened after the crash- a lot of us had queued from the early on to get in the first few trains and there was a collective boo when the fastrack queue got released before the main queue to go up the stairs. If you give everyone like a fastrack through virtual queueing it puts everyone on a more even keel. However, I can't really see Towers scrapping paid fastrack anytime soon- particularly with the current financial situation.
If they do implement it this season I can imagine they'll use the app-I found this on the app developers website https://attractions.io/covid-19 - and it will be for social distancing purposes. Even though I think by the end of the season they had worked the social distancing out more- there were still issues- for example the Smiler queue seemed to be a big issue- getting everyone in the pit to obey social distancing sounded like a right headache for the ride ops- many of which had to shout over the tannoy every ten mins to remind people to stand apart. Open and closing the queue as well seemed like a faff- whereas I guess with a Virtual queue in theory you would have less people in the pit.
AT86
TS Member
Yes Alton Towers had pretty much the exact same free virtual queue system as DLP up until about 2004.
Yes. It was back in 1998 when the Virtual Queue was trialed on Nemesis on "peak" days. It caused no end of complaints, as the only way you could ride was with a virtual queue ticket, until the last hour of ride opening when the queue was open to all.
The tickets were issued in 20min slots, e.g. 12:00-12:20, 12:20-12:40, 12:40-1300. Guests would invariably turn up early and give abuse when you told them they were early. I worked on this Virtual Queue and one day a manager from the hotel - Roy Colclough - was on front line focus with me. Suffice it to say he was horrified at the level of abuse the guests dished out.
Towers did learn from some of the mistakes - when the free Fastrack was available they switched to 5min slots, valid for an hour e.g. 12:05-13:05. You should still have seen how guests kicked off when part of their group got tickets in a different timeslot. You told them all to return at the later 5min slot and you would have thought you were asking them for the earth.
Disney did send over the President of the Haunted Mansion (bare in mind the term "President" is widely used in the USA - so effectively he was an Area / Ride Manager) to see the Virtual Queue system. They laughed. Then Disney did it their way, properly, as FastPass+. Then they made online booking possible at 60 days out (if staying off-resort in Florida). Then they did MagicBands etc. I am no fan of Disney - far from it - but they have done things right in Florida for a seamless guest experience.
Rick
TS Member
Reading too much into a job advert is a bit dangerous, but based on what it says:
"Queue" = 60 mins in the rain, battling queue jumpers and a myriad of e-cig vapour in assorted flavours
"Wait" = 75 mins doing whatever you want, riding other rides, getting lunch or wandering around Miniland
I'll take the latter, thanks.
"ticket upgrades including Virtual Queuing" would suggest it is neither, but could well be used for RAP alongside being an upgrade.
Right, but there is a distinction between the two terms
"Queue" = 60 mins in the rain, battling queue jumpers and a myriad of e-cig vapour in assorted flavours
"Wait" = 75 mins doing whatever you want, riding other rides, getting lunch or wandering around Miniland
I'll take the latter, thanks.
AstroDan
TS Team
If this is compulsory it simply won't work. Hopefully it isnt,
Alton lacks the support rides, boutiques and restaurants that large parks usually have - so there's going to be very little to do whilst waiting for your ride in Th13teen. It will push up the waits on the small few support/dark rides the park has.
At Walibi Holland, the system was compulsory and we were, quite literally, sat around on the grass for 2 hours waiting for our slot to appear. In that time, we couldn't virtually join another queue - and the support rides queues were enormous. The Top Spin was 1 hour, Mad House 30-40 minutes... etc.
Alton lacks the support rides, boutiques and restaurants that large parks usually have - so there's going to be very little to do whilst waiting for your ride in Th13teen. It will push up the waits on the small few support/dark rides the park has.
At Walibi Holland, the system was compulsory and we were, quite literally, sat around on the grass for 2 hours waiting for our slot to appear. In that time, we couldn't virtually join another queue - and the support rides queues were enormous. The Top Spin was 1 hour, Mad House 30-40 minutes... etc.
imanautie
TS Member
That's what Drayton manor use, but I suspect merlin will stick to accesso instead as it makes upsells easier.
AstroDan
TS Team
FP+ is awful.
Book your ride slots months in advance?
Rides that were formally walk on now have queues?
Remove all impulsiveness and flexibility from your day out?
I'm no fan of a fully pre-scheduled and rigidly timetabled day at a park.
Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
Book your ride slots months in advance?
Rides that were formally walk on now have queues?
Remove all impulsiveness and flexibility from your day out?
I'm no fan of a fully pre-scheduled and rigidly timetabled day at a park.
Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
That's really interesting. I'd assumed that Tussaud's were copying Fast Pass with Virtual Queue, but it sounds like that wasn't the case? Fast Pass was introduced in 1999, so Tussaud's actually introduced it a year earlier? Do you know if Virtual Queue and Fast Pass were provided by the same company?
jon81uk
TS Member
However "old" FastPass, that was used at the Tussauds parks in the early 2000s and still in use at DLParis and DLCalifornia is a reasonably good, if quite blunt system. Just spit out timed tickets until they are all gone, thats it. Then offer a standby line to allow for people who don't return and irregularities, although Disney put about 80% of ride capacity on FastPass, so standby is usually slow, even worse if they are on breakdown recovery.
Disneyland (California) have improved it significantly with MaxPass, its the same one hour slots, handed out in five minute intervals, but you can "collect" a return time on the app which saves a lot of walking. Also I think they then can offer extra slots if needed. MaxPass is only $20 a day including photo downloads too.
But there isn't really a lot of money in "free" Fastpass, Disney charge a lot more for entry so its sort of expected as part of a premium product. But DLParis is now offering paid for FastPass too. and of course the Tussauds Parks moved away from free systems 15 years ago.
I could see some virtual queue being used on selected rides where distancing is hard in queues for this season only, but it can just make people move to rides where it isn't offered, effectively allowing you to be in two queues at once. Far easier to just do as AT did last season and close the queue when the barriers are filled.
Disneyland (California) have improved it significantly with MaxPass, its the same one hour slots, handed out in five minute intervals, but you can "collect" a return time on the app which saves a lot of walking. Also I think they then can offer extra slots if needed. MaxPass is only $20 a day including photo downloads too.
But there isn't really a lot of money in "free" Fastpass, Disney charge a lot more for entry so its sort of expected as part of a premium product. But DLParis is now offering paid for FastPass too. and of course the Tussauds Parks moved away from free systems 15 years ago.
I could see some virtual queue being used on selected rides where distancing is hard in queues for this season only, but it can just make people move to rides where it isn't offered, effectively allowing you to be in two queues at once. Far easier to just do as AT did last season and close the queue when the barriers are filled.
FP+ is awful.
Book your ride slots months in advance?
Rides that were formally walk on now have queues?
Remove all impulsiveness and flexibility from your day out?
I'm no fan of a fully pre-scheduled and rigidly timetabled day at a park.
Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
Disney are no fools. They did treat guests differently based on the size of your wallet. Stay in an on-site hotel in Orlando (paying $$ for the privilege) and you could book FP+ at 60 days out. Stay off-site and it was 30 days out & availability for the top rides could be limited.
Disney also have programmed the system to time your 3 FP+ rides to be spaced out through the entire day in an attempt to keep you on park spending more dollars. Only when you have selected the times they offer can you go back in and edit the times so the 3 rides are in 3 consecutive hour timeslots - so you can do the 3 rides and one or two others then get the hell out of the park!
I too do not like booking rides a month or two in advance - but we did just so we could do Disney mornings, do our 3 FP+ rides and a few others, as above, then get the hell out of the park in question. That said, many guests obsess with booking FP+ the nanosecond the FP+ window opens & book advance dining reservations months in advance. Not my idea of a holiday. We just book a few Disney mornings and then play everything by ear on the day depending on what we fancy doing. Disney must be doing something right though, with 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, Disney Springs & 30 on-property hotels...
Unsure, the supplier of the Tussauds [as it was then] Virtual Queue machines was a Scottish company. I would imagine that Disney being American would have looked for a US-based supplier.
jon81uk
TS Member
The tickets with the return times on were pretty much identical on the Disney system and the Tussauds system back then. I really wouldn't be surprised if it was the same company.
It may have been the same company given that Disney sent the Haunted Mansion President over to see the Towers system in action. The main difference was the Disney machines read the magnetic stripe on your park ticket.
Disney had the good sense to roll out the system across all the major rides though. The saying "you get what you pay for" comes to mind - the walk-up gate price for Magic Kingdom 1 day adult ticket is $179 (so approximately £133). When you are paying those sort of prices you don't expect to be paying for up-charge FastPass+. Towers is close on £100 cheaper for admission (even more so if you use a BOGOF) so I guess Merlin can sort of justify the up-charging.